


The Raven and the Dove

by TextualDeviance



Series: The Raven and the Dove [1]
Category: Vikings - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 03:46:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3635409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TextualDeviance/pseuds/TextualDeviance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two birds, each longing in their own way to take wing</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Raven and the Dove

He knew he shouldn't dawdle like this, but today, Athelstan felt the pull of God's creation more than the pull of man's; he wanted to be outdoors, feeling the sun on his face and smelling the salt spray more than he wanted to be hunched over his work table in the dark, dusty scriptorium.

Brother Cenwulf hurried ahead of him, his sandals stirring the earth as he rushed to get to their work. He glanced over his shoulder. "Brother Athelstan, why have you stopped? The Lord will not wait for us."

"Go on ahead," Athelstan told him. "I will be there soon." He smiled. Brother Cenwulf was a friend, but also a man who nervously clung to every element of order in their regimented life. Athelstan himself could not do so. Though this life was all he had really known since he was a small child, something inside him remembered a life more free than this, and wondered at times whether he ever could find such a thing again.

Perhaps that was why he had so loved to travel, and took every opportunity to go on missions. His most recent sojourn, to a monastery in Frankia, had been one of the most amazing experiences of his life. He paused at a rise in the path, seeing a glimpse of the sea over the walls of his home. He closed his eyes, remembering the rough crossing of the narrow channel between Wessex and Frankia. All around him, his brothers had been vomiting, their stomachs churned by the roiling waves, but such buffeting about had served only to energize him. He stood at the front, not caring that his habit was being soaked each time a wave split across the prow. In his mind, the cries of the seagulls on his own island's shore became the ones of the gulls on a shore far more distant.

A sudden cry of an entirely different bird pierced his reverie. On a fence rail near the path, a glossy, black raven hopped restlessly. Athelstan stared, and to his astonishment, the bird stared back.

His first impulse was revulsion. Eaters of carrion, such birds were unclean. And yet, he recalled, God favored them, too, and had used them to feed Elijah as he hid from Ahab. An impulse he did not understand drew him toward the bird. It remained as he approached, fidgeting yet standing ground. Finally, as he was close enough to almost reach out and stroke the bird's ebony back, it cried out again and took wing, aiming for the flock of its brothers heading east in the rising sun.

***  

As a farmer, Ragnar was used to the pungent smells of animal dung. Pigs were the worst, but goats and cows not much better. What he never could get used to, though, was the smell of a human who had soiled himself once a blade or arrow had ended his life. Still, such stench was part of death, and death was part of life—his life, in particular.

The village of the Rus was one they had raided before. Its crude structures still bore scars from the last time its peaceful inhabitants had faced the brutal onslaught of the men from Kattegat. A shelter in a goat pen, which Floki had burnt down in their previous visit, had been rebuilt.

The farmer whose goats they were lay at Ragnar's feet, what was left of his blood staining the muddy ground. In the last raid, Ragnar had taken pity on the old man, and let him live. Rollo had objected: "Leave one alive, and he will exact revenge on you." Rollo was right. Instead of simply barricading himself and his wife inside their hut as before, he had met the raiders this time with a blade—a scythe—in hand. For this act of courage, he had perished, and the wails of his widow echoed in Ragnar's head. Nearly hidden by her din, however, he heard another sound: A coo; Gentle, if tinged with alarm.

Ragnar turned toward the sound. In a corner near a rough stone wall was a series of small cages. Most of these held rabbits, chickens, and other small creatures, but one on the end also held a brace of stock doves. Thin this early in the season, they were not yet ready for eating—not that most of them would be fattening up anytime soon. A spear that had missed its mark lay embedded in the side of the cage, where it had pierced or crushed the occupants. A lone survivor huddled by the partly open door, nudging at the gap, trying to seek freedom. Its wings stained with the blood of its fellows, it was nonetheless a striking bird: a gray so light that in brighter sun, it may have appeared white.

Ragnar approached the cage. The bird cowered, trying in vain to find an empty corner within its coop to hide from the blood-drenched human that stalked it. Ragnar felt a wash of pity. It was not this bird's fault that the farm on which it lived had been sacked and its companions felled by careless aim. He reached out, the bird's coos now a panicked cacophony, and snapped the door off of its broken hinge.

For a moment, the dove seemed confused. It stayed where it was, body tight against a corpse behind it, not daring to go toward Ragnar to seek the opening. Ragnar, understanding, stood aside. In a moment, the bird stepped gingerly toward the gap. It opened its wings, but then hesitated, tilting its head and eyeing the human who had provided it with freedom.

"I mean you no harm," Ragnar murmured, the words foreign on his tongue. "Go."

And so it did, aiming for the rocky shoreline to the west. Ragnar frowned. There was nothing that direction but the sea.


End file.
